How to unclog a toilet properly and easily! First of all, this is written by a plumber who has REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE unclogging hundreds of toilets professionally. I mention this first, because I just read a well-written, huge, illustrated, pretty, articulate article at wiki-how in how to unclog a toilet that was obviously written by some armchair expert that doesnt know the first thing about unclogging toilets!

It may do well in search engines, but the article is junk for real life information. In it they recommend everything from dish soap, a wire hanger, a vacuum, chemicals, plunging, hot water, enzymes and finally a cable snake!

How to unclog a toilet like a plumber

Lets get past all the mumbo-jumbo first off.

How NOT to unclog your toilet

First off, dont bother trying the wire hanger, a regular drain snake or any other nifty little hand held contraption that resembles a drain snake. I cant tell you how many clogged toilet calls I have been on where there was a bent up coat hanger lying next to the toilet, or worse a $20 drain snake all bent up. The only two tools you will to unclog is a plunger and a toilet auger.

Also, NEVER use chemicals or boiling hot water to unclog your toilet, unless you want to risk burning your face or even breaking the toilet. The only thing over the counter chemicals do is to make it harder for you to unclog the toilet now that you have nasty chemicals sloshing about that could potentially burn your skin. And using professional strength chemicals could create enough heat and pressure in your toilet to crack the porcelain bowl!
Two simple tools to unclog almost any clogged toilet

The first thing you will want to try is the trusty plunger. You probably think you know how to plunge a toilet, but most people How to unclog a toilet like a plumber actually do it wrong. The best plunger for the job is a spherical, small plunger about grapefruit size. The reason is that the small, spherical plunger will make a water tight seal on almost any toilet, and many toilets have strange shapes in the bowl that a normal plunger wont seal against too easily.

The perfect toilet plunger is the Continental 520 Power Plunger, pictured right.

The secret to good plunging is to create vacuum, and then suck the clog backwards and knock it loose. Most people try to PUSH the clog by ramming the plunger over and over, but this rarely works in my experience. Get the plunger to seal, and then with a pumping up and down action, create a suction vacuum, you will feel that the plunger is kind of stuck to the toilet once you have a vacuum seal going, then just yank the plunger back strongly, breaking the seal and hopefully dislodging the clog with the plunger. If that doesn’t work, then you will have to buy a toilet auger.

A toilet auger is the BEST tool for unclogging a toilet and one that I use the most. A decent toilet auger from General tools will cost you between $50-$75, so you might just want to call the plumber, unless you really want to unclog the toilet yourself, or you have to do it frequently enough that calling the plumber might get expensive!

The toilet auger works like a rotating drain snake to bust the clog up, and retrieve it, or knock it down the drain. It is pictured at the top of this article. To start, pull the handle up, while resting the bottom rubber bend at the bottom of the bowl. Push the handle-rod down while twisting it clockwise. The twisting motion allows the cable to maneuver through the bends of the toilet bowl. If you dont twist and rotate the auger cable, it wont get through!

If even a auger doesnt work, you will have to call a plumber to remove the bowl and try to get the clog out from the bottom, and/or replace the whole toilet!